The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (grave mercy TXT) đ
- Author: Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- Performer: 014044792X
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âWhatâyouâre a relation then, are you?â asked the servant, so bewildered that he began to feel quite alarmed.
âWell, hardly so. If you stretch a point, we are relations, of course, but so distant that one cannot really take cognizance of it. I once wrote to your mistress from abroad, but she did not reply. However, I have thought it right to make acquaintance with her on my arrival. I am telling you all this in order to ease your mind, for I see you are still far from comfortable on my account. All you have to do is to announce me as Prince Muishkin, and the object of my visit will be plain enough. If I am receivedâvery good; if not, well, very good again. But they are sure to receive me, I should think; Madame Epanchin will naturally be curious to see the only remaining representative of her family. She values her Muishkin descent very highly, if I am rightly informed.â
The princeâs conversation was artless and confiding to a degree, and the servant could not help feeling that as from visitor to common serving-man this state of things was highly improper. His conclusion was that one of two things must be the explanationâ either that this was a begging impostor, or that the prince, if prince he were, was simply a fool, without the slightest ambition; for a sensible prince with any ambition would certainly not wait about in anterooms with servants, and talk of his own private affairs like this. In either case, how was he to announce this singular visitor?
âI really think I must request you to step into the next room!â he said, with all the insistence he could muster.
âWhy? If I had been sitting there now, I should not have had the opportunity of making these personal explanations. I see you are still uneasy about me and keep eyeing my cloak and bundle. Donât you think you might go in yourself now, without waiting for the secretary to come out?â
âNo, no! I canât announce a visitor like yourself without the secretary. Besides the general said he was not to be disturbedâ he is with the Colonel Câ. Gavrila Ardalionovitch goes in without announcing.â
âWho may that be? a clerk?â
âWhat? Gavrila Ardalionovitch? Oh no; he belongs to one of the companies. Look here, at all events put your bundle down, here.â
âYes, I will if I may; andâcan I take off my cloakâ
âOf course; you canât go in THERE with it on, anyhow.â
The prince rose and took off his mantle, revealing a neat enough morning costumeâa little worn, but well made. He wore a steel watch chain and from this chain there hung a silver Geneva watch. Fool the prince might be, still, the generalâs servant felt that it was not correct for him to continue to converse thus with a visitor, in spite of the fact that the prince pleased him somehow.
âAnd what time of day does the lady receive?â the latter asked, reseating himself in his old place.
âOh, thatâs not in my province! I believe she receives at any time; it depends upon the visitors. The dressmaker goes in at eleven. Gavrila Ardalionovitch is allowed much earlier than other people, too; he is even admitted to early lunch now and then.â
âIt is much warmer in the rooms here than it is abroad at this season,â observed the prince; â but it is much warmer there out of doors. As for the housesâa Russian canât live in them in the winter until he gets accustomed to them.â
âDonât they heat them at all?â
âWell, they do heat them a little; but the houses and stoves are so different to ours.â
âHâm! were you long away?â
âFour years! and I was in the same place nearly all the time,âin one village.â
âYou must have forgotten Russia, hadnât you?â
âYes, indeed I hadâa good deal; and, would you believe it, I often wonder at myself for not having forgotten how to speak Russian? Even now, as I talk to you, I keep saying to myself âhow well I am speaking it.â Perhaps that is partly why I am so talkative this morning. I assure you, ever since yesterday evening I have had the strongest desire to go on and on talking Russian.â
âHâm! yes; did you live in Petersburg in former years?â
This good flunkey, in spite of his conscientious scruples, really could not resist continuing such a very genteel and agreeable conversation.
âIn Petersburg? Oh no! hardly at all, and now they say so much is changed in the place that even those who did know it well are obliged to relearn what they knew. They talk a good deal about the new law courts, and changes there, donât they?â
âHâm! yes, thatâs true enough. Well now, how is the law over there, do they administer it more justly than here?â
âOh, I donât know about that! Iâve heard much that is good about our legal administration, too. There is no capital punishment here for one thing.â
âIs there over there?â
âYesâI saw an execution in Franceâat Lyons. Schneider took me over with him to see it.â
âWhat, did they hang the fellow?â
âNo, they cut off peopleâs heads in France.â
âWhat did the fellow do?âyell?â
âOh noâitâs the work of an instant. They put a man inside a frame and a sort of broad knife falls by machinery -they call the thing a guillotine-it falls with fearful force and weight-the head springs off so quickly that you canât wink your eye in between. But all the preparations are so dreadful. When they announce the sentence, you know, and prepare the criminal and tie his hands, and cart him off to the scaffoldâthatâs the fearful part of the business. The people all crowd roundâeven women-though they donât at all approve of women looking on.â
âNo, itâs not a thing for women.â
âOf course notâof course not!âbah! The criminal was a fine intelligent fearless man; Le Gros was his name; and I may tell youâbelieve it or not, as you likeâthat when that man stepped upon the scaffold he CRIED, he did indeed,âhe was as white as a bit of paper. Isnât it a dreadful idea that he should have cried âcried! Whoever heard of a grown man crying from fearânot a child, but a man who never had cried beforeâa grown man of forty-five years. Imagine what must have been going on in that manâs mind at such a moment; what dreadful convulsions his whole spirit must have endured; it is an outrage on the soul thatâs what it is. Because it is said âthou shalt not kill,â is he to be killed because he murdered some one else? No, it is not right, itâs an impossible theory. I assure you, I saw the sight a month ago and itâs dancing before my eyes to this moment. I dream of it, often.â
The prince had grown animated as he spoke, and a tinge of colour suffused his pale face, though his way of talking was as quiet as ever. The servant followed his words with sympathetic interest. Clearly he was not at all anxious to bring the conversation to an end. Who knows? Perhaps he too was a man of imagination and with some capacity for thought.
âWell, at all events it is a good thing that thereâs no pain when the poor fellowâs head flies off,â he remarked.
âDo you know, though,â cried the prince warmly, âyou made that remark now, and everyone says the same thing, and the machine is designed with the purpose of avoiding pain, this guillotine I mean; but a thought came into my head then: what if it be a bad plan after all? You may laugh at my idea, perhapsâbut I could not help its occurring to me all the same. Now with the rack and tortures and so onâyou suffer terrible pain of course; but then your torture is bodily pain only (although no doubt you have plenty of that) until you die. But HERE I should imagine the most terrible part of the whole punishment is, not the bodily pain at allâbut the certain knowledge that in an hour,âthen in ten minutes, then in half a minute, then nowâthis very INSTANTâyour soul must quit your body and that you will no longer be a manâ and that this is certain, CERTAIN! Thatâs the pointâthe certainty of it. Just that instant when you place your head on the block and hear the iron grate over your headâthenâthat quarter of a second is the most awful of all.
âThis is not my own fantastical opinionâmany people have thought the same; but I feel it so deeply that Iâll tell you what I think. I believe that to execute a man for murder is to punish him immeasurably more dreadfully than is equivalent to his crime. A murder by sentence is far more dreadful than a murder committed by a criminal. The man who is attacked by robbers at night, in a dark wood, or anywhere, undoubtedly hopes and hopes that he may yet escape until the very moment of his death. There are plenty of instances of a man running away, or imploring for mercyâat all events hoping on in some degreeâeven after his throat was cut. But in the case of an execution, that last hopeâhaving which it is so immeasurably less dreadful to die,âis taken away from the wretch and CERTAINTY substituted in its place! There is his sentence, and with it that terrible certainty that he cannot possibly escape deathâwhich, I consider, must be the most dreadful anguish in the world. You may place a soldier before a cannonâs mouth in battle, and fire upon himâand he will still hope. But read to that same soldier his death-sentence, and he will either go mad or burst into tears. Who dares to say that any man can suffer this without going mad? No, no! it is an abuse, a shame, it is unnecessaryâwhy should such a thing exist? Doubtless there may be men who have been sentenced, who have suffered this mental anguish for a while and then have been reprieved; perhaps such men may have been able to relate their feelings afterwards. Our Lord Christ spoke of this anguish and dread. No! no! no! No man should be treated so, no man, no man!â
The servant, though of course he could not have expressed all this as the prince did, still clearly entered into it and was greatly conciliated, as was evident from the increased amiability of his expression. âIf you are really very anxious for a smoke,â he remarked, âI think it might possibly be managed, if you are very quick about it. You see they might come out and inquire for you, and you wouldnât be on the spot. You see that door there? Go in there and youâll find a little room on the right; you can smoke there, only open the window, because I ought not to allow it really, andâ.â But there was no time, after all.
A young fellow entered the anteroom at this moment, with a bundle of papers in his hand. The footman hastened to help him take off his overcoat. The new arrival glanced at the prince out of the corners of his eyes.
âThis gentleman declares, Gavrila Ardalionovitch,â began the man, confidentially and almost familiarly, âthat he is Prince Muishkin and a relative of Madame Epanchinâs. He has just arrived from abroad, with nothing but a bundle by way of luggageâ.â
The prince did not hear the rest, because at this point the servant continued his communication in a whisper.
Gavrila Ardalionovitch listened attentively, and gazed at the prince with
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